1
1 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA 2
3 k k k k
4 Budget Hearing 5 Judiciary 6
7 House Appropriations Committee 8
9 k k k k
10 Main Capitol Building 11 Majority Caucus Room 140 Harrisburg, Pennsylvania 12
13
14 Monday, February 24, 2014 - 2:36 p . m.
15
16 --oOo--
17
18
19
20
21 1300 Garrison Drive, York, PA 17404
22 717.764.7801
23
24
25
— Key Reporters [email protected] 2
1 COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT:
2 Honorable William F. Adolph, Majority Chairman Honorable Ryan Aument 3 Honorable Karen Boback Honorable Jim Christiana 4 Honorable Gary Day Honorable Gordon Denlinger 5 Honorable Brian Ellis Honorable Garth Everett 6 Honorable Glen Grell Honorable Seth M. Grove 7 Honorable Adam Harris Honorable Tom Killion 8 Honorable David Millard Honorable Mark Mustio 9 Honorable Donna Oberlander Honorable Bernie O ’Neill 10 Honorable Mike Peifer Honorable Scott Petri 11 Honorable Jeffrey Pyle Honorable Curtis G. Sonney 12 Honorable Joseph F. Markosek, Minority Chairman Honorable Brendan Boyle 13 Honorable Matthew Bradford Honorable Michelle Brownlee 14 Honorable Mike Carroll Honorable Scott Conklin 15 Honorable Madeleine Dean Honorable Deberah Kula 16 Honorable Tim Mahoney Honorable Michael H. O ’Brien 17 Honorable Cherelle Parker Honorable John Sabatina 18 Honorable Jake Wheatley
19 REPUBLICAN NON-COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT: 20 Honorable Matt Baker 21 Honorable Sheryl Delozier Honorable Gene DiGirolamo 22 Honorable Jerry Stern Honorable Joe Hackett 23 Honorable John Taylor Honorable Rick Saccone 24 Honorable Mark Keller Honorable Mindy Fee 25
— Key Reporters [email protected] 3
1 DEMOCRATIC NON-COMMITTEE MEMBERS PRESENT:
2 Honorable Flo Fabrizio Honorable Pam DeLissio 3 Honorable Michael Schlossberg Honorable Paul Costa 4 Honorable Dom Costa Honorable Frank Burns 5 Honorable Tom Caltagirone
6
7
8 STAFF MEMBERS PRESENT:
9 David Donley 10 Majority Deputy Executive Director
11 Daniel Clark, Esquire 12 Majority Chief Counsel
13 Miriam Fox 14 Minority Executive Director
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
— Key Reporters [email protected] 4
1 INDEX OF TESTIFIERS
2 TESTIFIERS
3 JUDICIARY 4 Chief Justice Ronald Castille 5 Justice J. Michael Eakin 6 Zygmont Pines, Esquire 7 Court Administrator of Pennsylvania
8 Kenneth Crump Budget Administrator 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16 REQUEST FOR INFORMATION
17 Page Line Page Line Page Line
18 59 18-19
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
— Key Reporters [email protected] 5
1 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Good
2 afternoon. I’d like to reconvene the House
3 Appropriations budget hearings. The next budget
4 hearing will be the judiciary.
5 Before we get started, I’d just like to
6 acknowledge the presence of Representative Garth
7 Everett and, also, Representative Rick Saccone and
8 Representative Mark Keller have joined us. Also
9 arriving has been Representative Mike O ’Brien and
10 Representative Tim Mahoney. Thank you.
11 It’s certainly a pleasure to have before
12 us, and it’s certainly a privilege to have before
13 us two distinguished justices, Chief Justice Ronald
14 Castille and Chief Justice Michael Eakin. I
15 appreciate you taking the time out of your busy
16 schedule to appear before us today.
17 Chief Justice, if I can address you.
18 If you’d like to make an opening statement, and
19 then we’ll get on to the questioning.
20 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Yes, Mr.
21 Chairman, and thank you for inviting us here to
22 hear about our budget. It’s a critical situation
23 for us, but first I’ d like to introduce Justice
24 Michael Eakin from our court; Court Administrator
25 Zygmont Pines; our numbers person, Ken Crump. We
— Key [email protected] 6
1 have also with us today the President Judge of the
2 Court of Judicial Discipline, Magisterial District
3 Judge Chuck Clement; the new President Judge of the
4 Superior Court, Susan Gantman; the new judge of the
5 Commonwealth Court, Ann Pellegrini; the Chair of
6 the Court of Judicial Discipline. Those
7 individuals will be willing to help explain if
8 there’s any questions for them. We also speak on
9 behalf of the Court of Judicial Conduct and the
10 Judicial Discipline Board.
11 I’d like to start off by saying some of
12 the things we have been doing over the years and to
13 highlight some of our budget needs before the
14 members of both committees. As you well know, our
15 budgets are primarily driven by the
16 constitutionally-required personnel costs, the
17 benefits and the salaries of the judges.
18 Basically, that constitutes 86. 4 percent of our
19 budget. 9.2 percent of our budget is direct
20 pass-throughs through our budget to the counties,
21 leaving us with basically a little around 4 percent
22 as an operating budget. As you all know, we’re
23 less than one-half of one percent of the entire
24 budget. We don’t have too much room to play with
25 with our 4 percent.
— Key [email protected] 7
1 In recent years, though, we have been
2 trying to save money, just like all of the agencies
3 of the Commonwealth and even this branch. We've
4 saved money by avoiding appointments through the
5 judicial vacancies, and that's with the cooperation
6 of the Governor and the Senate. Over the past
7 three years, we've saved $14 million there.
8 We've also saved $4.5 million by
9 reducing the number of magisterial district judges
10 that sit in the courts of Pennsylvania. There will
11 probably be a total of 28 magisterial district
12 justices that will be absorbed into the other
13 systems through attrition. So, over the past six
14 years, we have saved $45.8 million through various
15 means.
16 On the revenue side, we've instituted
17 ways for defendants or individuals to pay their
18 fines, fees and costs with credit cards, debit
19 cards, PAePay. Always say it's better to pay your
20 fines and fees and costs and have a debt with a
21 credit card company as opposed to having a
22 constable or a sheriff come to your door for
23 nonpayment of fines, fees and costs, which are all
24 court ordered. Totally, in the last year, we
25 collected $455 million through the calendar year
— Key [email protected] 8
1 2013.
2 There were a couple new initiatives that
3 we would talk about or we can discuss further.
4 That would be the transition of the county clerks,
5 Clerk of Courts and the prothonotaries to the
6 Unified Judicial System, to bring them into the
7 judicial family, as we call it, to make the
8 delivery of justice, especially the administration
9 of it more efficient and effective.
10 The County Commissioners Association,
11 by the way, supports this move, and we can do it by
12 a shifting of fees that go to the counties, so it
13 will not be in addition to our request.
14 We have done other things. We’re doing
15 things in the system itself, as I mentioned, clerks
16 and prothies unifications. We are rightsizing the
17 Common Pleas Court judges through a weighted
18 caseload study that we have just started; been able
19 to start with a federal grant and the cooperation
20 of the National Center for State Courts.
21 We have effected a new judicial code of
22 conduct, which will take effect July 1st after a
23 lot of work. Anne Lazarus was our leader on that,
24 as the Superior Court.
25 We’re into constable reform. We have
— Key [email protected] 9
1 already put the president judges in charge of
2 making the constables of the various counties kind
3 of toe the line and be professionals and try to
4 avoid some of the headlines that we’ve seen in the
5 past.
6 This year we’re starting an Elder Law
7 Task Force, which is addressing elder abuse,
8 elder’s access to the court system. If you want to
9 know what an elder is, it’s a person 65 years of
10 age or older. So, I am one of them myself,
11 although I do have a lot better access to the court
12 system.
13 We are also studying domestic filing
14 fees in divorce cases. Some of them have gotten
15 out of line over the years, and it’s really
16 expensive in some counties to obtain a divorce, so
17 we’re doing that.
18 We’re still running our Office of
19 Children and Families in the Courts, where we’re
20 getting kids out of the foster care system and into
21 loving homes where they can thrive and, perhaps,
22 become great citizens of the great Commonwealth of
23 Pennsylvania. The first year it began, we were
24 able to help 7, 200 kids get out of foster care and
25 into homes. Each one of those children costs about
— Key [email protected] 10
1 $50,000 to support in foster care on a yearly
2 basis.
3 The second year we got 5,000 kids out of
4 foster care, and we’re getting the numbers now for
5 this past year, but we think they'll be similar to
6 that. It's a savings to the state, a savings to
7 the federal government, and a savings to the
8 counties. It is a significant savings. The 7,200
9 kids that we got out of foster care the one year,
10 we asked DPW to give us the numbers, the net, of
11 what it saved them. It saved the DPW $117 million
12 that single year alone.
13 We are continuing the expansion of our
14 special courts system. I think last year we had
15 about 81, I believe was the number. This year
16 we're over a hundred, including many veterans
17 courts, which are to serve our heroes that come
18 back from serving our nation, who sometimes fall by
19 the wayside.
20 We've expanded to 21 counties the
21 housing remediation program in the state of
22 Pennsylvania that helps keep people in their homes
23 in these difficult economic times.
24 We are an active court. We do things
25 more than just sit and hear cases and write
— Key [email protected] 11
1 opinions. We can affect, significantly, the lives
2 of thousands and hundreds of thousands and maybe
3 millions of Pennsylvanians that come through and
4 have dealings with the court system.
5 So, thank you for allowing me to mention
6 that. We would be more than happy to discuss any
7 of the issues you have. We have handed out to your
8 court earlier this brochure, How the Judiciary
9 Impacts Philadelphians.
10 JUSTICE EAKIN: Pennsylvanians.
11 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Well,
12 Philadelphians and some Pennsylvanians.
13 (Laughter) .
14 JUSTICE EAKIN: And the rest of us.
15 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Everybody else.
16 Sorry about that. Thank you, Justice.
17 It has a list of the savings that we
18 have also made. There's some pretty poignant
19 stories, especially the one about the state trooper
20 who says the best thing that helps them out is
21 access to the judicial computer system, because it
22 literally saves their lives when they're doing a
23 car stop or going into a domestic violence
24 situation, which are the two major incidents that
25 are most dangerous to our brave police officers.
— Key [email protected] 12
1 So, we have that for you.
2 We are ready to take questions.
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
4 Chief Justice. As is customary, Chairman Markosek
5 and I always invite the chairmen of the standing
6 committees. It’s unfortunate, but Chairman Marsico
7 was not able to make it, but his staff is here and
8 certainly going to be taking notes and pass us any
9 questions that Chairman Marsico may have had for
10 you. But, we are fortunate to have Chairman
11 Caltagirone, the Democratic Chair of the Judiciary
12 Committee, and I’m happy to see him here.
13 We'll start off by asking a basic
14 question to the Chief Court. The Governor has
15 suggested level funding for the courts, I think
16 $317 million, and you requested 342 million, a
17 difference of about $25 million; 6.7 percent
18 increase.
19 Your Honor, could you please explain to
20 the Appropriations Committee why you feel this
21 increase of 6.7 percent is necessary?
22 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Generally,
23 overall, it will affect us tremendously because of
24 the fixed salaries and benefits that we have to pay
25 to our employees and in the pass-through to the
— Key [email protected] 13
1 other sections -- to the counties. Sometimes we
2 add that up, and we happen to have the effect that
3 the reduction or the flat-funding would have on the
4 system. The funding gap is equal to the salaries
5 and benefits of 35 and a half judges. It’s funding
6 to the gap and the salaries and benefits for 31
7 judges and 112 magisterial district judges and 112
8 judicial days.
9 There’s a whole list that I could go
10 through that shows the impact that it would have,
11 especially on our staff, because of the inability
12 to get funds from other sources other than the
13 appropriations. So, overall, it would have a
14 devastating impact on our budget if we could not
15 receive the amount we requested.
16 I’ ve noticed, in the past, you and the
17 legislature have been very cooperative with helping
18 us out in the courts to meet our budgetary needs.
19 So we thank you for that, and we look forward to
20 your assistance this time.
21 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you.
22 I’m sure we’ll get into further questions about how
23 we can try to arrive at that figure one way or the
24 other. Chairman Markosek.
25 CHAIRMAN MARKOSEK: Thank you, Chairman.
— Key [email protected] 14
1 For the information of the members, Representative
2 Dom Costa from Allegheny County has joined us as a
3 guest of the committee. I would be really remiss
4 if I didn’t recognize my former long-time
5 colleague, former Representative Tom Tigue, who is
6 now a member of the Judicial Conduct Board. Thank
7 you for that sidebar, and I recognize some good
8 friends.
9 Justices, welcome, as well as the other
10 judges in the room and their staff. I don’t have
11 any immediate questions. I’m going to let the rest
12 of the members use my time for their questions.
13 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you
15 Chairman Markosek. We’ll then go to Chairman
16 Caltagirone.
17 REPRESENTATIVE CALTAGIRONE: Thank you,
18 Mr. Chairman.
19 Justices and court personnel, just to
20 share with you, I just finished reading Young
21 Patriots and how we count our roots. It was very
22 interesting with Madison and Hamilton and, of
23 course, John Marshall.
24 One of the things I think we need to
25 share with the members is that, we have three legs
— Key [email protected] 15
1 of government, and, certainly, judiciary is one of
2 those legs. For our own benefit, as was mentioned
3 earlier by the Chief Justice, it’s kind of
4 interesting that about a half of one percent goes
5 to the legislature and about a half of one percent
6 is spent by the judiciary.
7 With that being said, following up on
8 the comments by the Chief, the courts historically
9 have actually taken in more money than it costs us
10 to operate. I think we need to keep that in mind
11 when you’re looking at the budgets and how the
12 money is distributed.
13 Now, to the question. As you may be
14 aware, I’ ve introduced legislation to reenact Act
15 49 — it’s House Bill 1791--that’s due to sunset on
16 December 31st of 2014. Question to the court: Can
17 you explain to us why it’s essential to the
18 operations of the judiciary for Act 49 to be
19 extended? That was my baby. I fathered that bill,
20 and I’ m proud of it because it did provide the
21 supplemental appropriations that were absolutely
22 needed to pay for the judiciary to keep in
23 operation. If one of you could answer that
24 question, I’d appreciate it.
25 JUSTICE EAKIN: Our projections are that
— Key [email protected] 16
1 that would raise about $2.8 million in the upcoming
2 fiscal year. Given a gap of 25 million, that's
3 over 10 percent. We can reduce the deficit that
4 we're staring at by over 10 percent with the
5 renewal of that. If we don't get it, if your bill
6 does not get the support and passed, it digs the
7 hole 10 percent deeper; 11 percent, I guess,
8 deeper. So that's quite important.
9 I might note, we just put out a release,
10 I believe today, about the amount that the court
11 collected in the last year. It was somewhere
12 around $440 plus million, which hammers home your
13 point that, if the budget we seek is 90 million
14 short of what we're taking in -- We're not in this
15 to be paying our own way in that sense. But if you
16 just look at the numbers, the point you make is
17 really quite valid, and the amount we've taken in
18 last year has just been calculated and released
19 today.
20 REPRESENTATIVE CALTAGIRONE: I just have
21 one more thought. Yes, Chief Justice.
22 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: That's a
23 thirteen fifty dollar temporary filing fee, which
24 we, unfortunately, had to put in place to get us
25 through these tough economic times. It brings in
— Key [email protected] 17
1 $27 million on a fiscal year. So if this thing
2 were to expire in December, there would still be
3 money coming in, but basically, you’d be looking at
4 a 13-and-a-half-million-dollar hole in our budget
5 until next June. I keep saying June 31st. I don’t
6 think there is one of those. It’s July 1st. Then
7 after that would be another $2 7-million-or-more
8 hole in our budget for the fiscal year further down
9 the pike.
10 It’s only supposed to have been
11 temporary. When we originally initiated it, we
12 thought it would be for two or three years and that
13 the economic cycle would bring back revenue, but it
14 has not. So it would be important to have that
15 redone, re-enacted, because a dollar of it also
16 goes to fund legal services in the state of
17 Pennsylvania; plus, another $2.25 of it goes to
18 help fund the DAs’ salaries who have chosen
19 full-time employment as DAs without private
20 practice. So, it would be a tremendous difficulty
21 for us to overcome, including what the Governor has
22 flat-funded us.
23 REPRESENTATIVE CALTAGIRONE: So, either
24 the reenactment or the waiver of the sunset
25 provision, which would be included into the budget
— Key [email protected] 18
1 for your consideration, members of the
2 Appropriations Committee.
3 Just one follow-up question, Mr.
4 Chairman. This has been near and dear to me
5 because I wrote the original legislation on the
6 court computerization many, many years ago. Can
7 you explain to the members the need and benefits of
8 the court computer system? You had touched on that
9 with the state trooper.
10 We were one of the first in the nation,
11 and I'm very proud of that; that we did computerize
12 the entire judiciary from top to bottom. We're
13 still a leg up, I think, on most other states, but
14 we're still perfecting the system. I'd like to
15 open it up for your explanation.
16 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Justice Eakin
17 is our computer person in the court, so it's an
18 appropriate question for him.
19 JUSTICE EAKIN: I'm the computer person
20 because my handwriting is awful; and, therefore, I
21 need to take a laptop on the bench, which makes
22 everyone think I'm computer smart.
23 But I am liaison a with our IT staff
24 about this matter of thing. I just learned today
25 that we've not only got other states coming to look
— Key [email protected] 19
1 at our system but, internationally, we've got other
2 countries coming to look at Pennsylvania's computer
3 system because it is, indeed, cutting-edge.
4 But computers are like buying cars. You
5 don't buy it and then it's free. You've got to put
6 gas and tires and batteries and inspect it and
7 rewrite it every couple hundred thousand miles. We
8 have over 12,000 users on our system of all
9 stripes. So, to keep it up to date, we need
10 constant rewriting of the civil division, the
11 criminal programs, juvenile laws, magistrates'
12 systems and the like. And every time the
13 legislature passes a new law or tweaks an existing
14 law, we've got to rewrite the computer system to
15 fit it.
16 I was just given an anecdote this
17 morning about the transportation bill; that
18 Department of Transportation is calling the
19 judiciary to find out the projected costs of
20 certain parts of this because our system lets us do
21 that. When I say it's cutting-edge, it's cutting-
22 edge. But it's not cutting-edge without a purpose
23 and a focus.
24 We have a five-year plan that's extended
25 out as to what's getting rewritten when, why;
— Key [email protected] 20
1 prioritizing it and continually looking at the
2 things that aren’t being rewritten just to keep
3 them up to date as well. It takes a lot to do
4 that. Again, I’m very proud every time I speak to
5 somebody from outside the state as to what we do
6 and how we do it. But it’s not cheap and it’s not
7 free.
8 We do, I think, more in-house than most,
9 which makes us less susceptible to the vagaries of
10 contract services that statistically go out of
11 business a lot; statistically want you to buy their
12 system and not adapt their system to your needs.
13 These are things, again, that are very important to
14 us, but not just to us. They’re important to the
15 police. They’re important to probation. They’re
16 important to anyone who can benefit from access to
17 the system.
18 If you’re an attorney and want to find
19 out what’s scheduled in Perry County’s court this
20 afternoon, you can find it through our website,
21 through our docketing information. It is
22 phenomenal. The older you are, the more phenomenal
23 it may seem. But it’s really something; what we
24 can do and how we can do it.
25 But, again, our revenues from Act 64 and
— Key [email protected] 21
1 122 have continued to decline the last seven years,
2 to the point where our reserve has declined. And
3 should there be some catastrophic event, we’re okay
4 but only for the moment. So, continuing the
5 funding of it is vital not just to the courts, but
6 to everybody that the courts affect.
7 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: If I might,
8 Chairman Caltagirone, none of that funding comes
9 from taxpayers’ dollars. It’s all filing fees on
10 the court system, so it’s the court system
11 supporting the court system. Were that money not
12 there, then we would be actually coming to you for
13 a lot more money to keep this system in place that
14 we have. And that was through the foresight of one
15 of our justices many years ago, and the Judiciary
16 Committee to start this thing, and the legislature
17 to pass the filing fee that supports that. And
18 legal services for the indigent, that’s part of it
19 also; part of that fee.
20 Just to give you a for instance, our
21 computer, it supports 67 counties and CPCMS, the
22 Common Pleas Court management that supports all the
23 MDJs in the state. We routinely deliver data to
24 municipal agencies like police, parking
25 authorities. We routinely file data at the request
— Key [email protected] 22
1 of 31 state and government agencies: The Attorney
2 General, the crime and delinquency, corrections,
3 welfare. The list goes on of the individuals who
4 need our data services.
5 We supply statewide information from the
6 MDJ system and the CP system to the state police,
7 to update the CLEAN system, and to the FBI for the
8 NCIC system, which is going to save the lives of
9 police officers and law enforcement officers. We
10 provide bulk data requests to government agencies
11 like the transportation; on the part of the
12 transportation bill that Mike just mentioned.
13 So, it’s not just us. It’s an integral
14 part of state government and the taxpayers for the
15 last 25 years or so, have not had to pay one cent
16 into this system. We’ve managed it well. It’s
17 audited. We turn our audits over to AO. We’ve
18 supplied information to the legislature, the House
19 and the Senate. We marshal those funds carefully,
20 and they’re critical to the success of not only our
21 branch of government but for many other agencies.
22 REPRESENTATIVE CALTAGIRONE: One final
23 closing comment. I can remember years back when I
24 was dating one of the judges, and on a Friday
25 afternoon, the shop had to shut down just to get
— Key [email protected] 23
1 the paperwork done. Now with the computerization,
2 all of a sudden, you just hit a few buttons, boom,
3 boom, boom, and everything comes right out. It’s
4 just amazing what the system can really do.
5 We’ve come a long way, and we just can’t
6 go backwards. I want to share that with the
7 members because I think it’s so, so important that
8 we treat our friends in the other branch of
9 government as good as we treat ourselves.
10 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: What happened
11 to your date?
12 REPRESENTATIVE CALTAGIRONE: She’s still
13 serving.
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you. I
15 would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the
16 presence of House Republican Majority Leader Mike
17 Turzai who has joined us.
18 At this time, I’ d like Representative
19 Glen Grell to ask his question.
20 REPRESENTATIVE GRELL: Thank you, Mr.
21 Chairman. Thank you, everybody, for being here,
22 members of the judiciary.
23 Chief Justice, I’ d like to ask you to go
24 in a little further on two items you mentioned in
25 your opening remarks; first, having to do with the
— Key [email protected] 24
1 magisterial district justices and the resetting of
2 those numbers. I know that's been a long time in
3 the works. We've talked about that at previous
4 appropriations meetings and judiciary meetings, for
5 that matter. I want to commend you for what you've
6 done there.
7 I know you did give an amount that you
8 believe you saved from that. Was it 14 million;
9 did I hear correctly?
10 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: 4.5 million.
11 REPRESENTATIVE GRELL: 4.5. And that's
12 a recurring annual adjustment, and that's from
13 eliminating 28, I believe.
14 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: We're up to 18
15 now .
16 REPRESENTATIVE GRELL: Then another 10,
17 so there will be additional savings when that takes
18 place?
19 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Correct. We
20 originally had 50 as a target, but that was just
21 guesswork. So after extensive review, our court
22 decided that 28 would be the number. We wanted to
23 avoid the situation like one of your legislators
24 was into where she had to run against another
25 magistrate for the same district. So, the other 10
— Key [email protected] 25
1 will be attrition as they retire, or whatever
2 happens to them, or leave the bench.
3 REPRESENTATIVE GRELL: Moving, then, to
4 next step. I know you're currently working on a
5 similar project assessing workload of Common Pleas
6 judges. And just like we do every 10 years with
7 redistricting, we sort of reset the deck.
8 Could you give us an idea of how that's
9 coming and what savings you may project from that,
10 if you're at that point, and when you might be in a
11 position to give the General Assembly some
12 recommendations on how to go about paring those
13 ranks as well?
14 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: If I would just
15 give you some general information, Representative
16 Grell, the cost to the court system of one MDJ in
17 salaries and benefits is $117,000. That's just
18 one, so you multiply that by how many ever.
19 A Common Pleas Court judge in our budget
20 costs about 225 to $230, 000 just for salary and
21 benefits alone. So, each one of those that is
22 eliminated or added takes a plus or minus that
23 number away from our budget.
24 On the Common Pleas Court, we were
25 always asked a question by the legislature about,
— Key [email protected] 26
1 what about Common Pleas? Are there too many; are
2 there too few? We said we did not really know
3 because we did not have data on what they do. We
4 know what they do: Robberies, murders, things like
5 that, civil cases. But we decided that we would
6 take a look to see if there’s some way that —
7 would be a rational way to say if we have too many
8 judges, too many Common Pleas Court judges, or too
9 few Common Pleas Court judges, giving shifting
10 populations and different kinds of crimes that come
11 on board, like computer crimes, which we never had
12 before.
13 Because of the complicated nature, a
14 robbery of a 7-Eleven that a judge hears is a lot
15 different than a triple homicide or even a lengthy
16 divorce case, things like that. So, we’re actually
17 to the point where we have got the National Center
18 for State Courts to come in, and they’re going to
19 assist us in trying to quantify how much of time
20 that a judge spends on a certain type of case,
21 which, you can imagine, is pretty difficult.
22 So, the NCSC has done this in six other
23 states?
24 MR. PINES: 15, I think.
25 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: I’m sorry. Mr.
— Key [email protected] 27
1 Pines says 15 other states have done the same kind
2 of review. So we've gotten a federal grant. We've
3 gotten our committee together. Most are judges, by
4 the way, and we're going to start on March 7th with
5 a one-month review period where every Common Pleas
6 Court judge will have to record the data of what
7 happens in their courtroom and what happens out of
8 the courtroom, too; meetings, things like that.
9 Hopefully, it will give us a good grasp on what a
10 Common Pleas Court judge does.
11 Then, unlike the magisterial district
12 judges where we can adjust their boundaries and
13 their caseloads, we're bound by the counties. And
14 also, we can't eliminate Common Pleas Court judges
15 through our review. It has to be done by the
16 Senate. So that would be up to the Senate and the
17 Governor, but at least we think we will be able to
18 hand to them accurate information which will allow
19 them to make those decisions somewhere down the
20 line. It may be more judges; it may be less
21 judges, but we can't say at this time. But the
22 crucial part is in March.
23 REPRESENTATIVE GRELL: Just a couple
24 follow-ups. I believe when you were talking about
25 the impact of not getting the additional
— Key [email protected] 28
1 2 5-million-dollar budget request, you equated that
2 to 35 and a half Common Pleas judges, which, if I
3 do my math correctly, the total cost of a Common
4 Pleas judge would appear to be about $700,000, if
5 you include, I guess, everything that’s involved in
6 however you do the other calculation?
7 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: A lot of it is
8 picked up by the counties also. I was adding them
9 up as it goes down the line, so that number -
10 REPRESENTATIVE GRELL: Oh, it’s all of
11 those things?
12 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Correct. We
13 can give you a list of those.
14 REPRESENTATIVE GRELL: I may also follow
15 up with a couple written questions in terms of some
16 numbers of the extent to which you’re using senior
17 judges and things like that. If you’d be receptive
18 to that kind of a follow-up, then you can respond
19 back to the Chairman of the committee.
20 I would just say in closing that this
21 is, I believe, the third year that we’ve had this
22 item on the discussion list for the appropriations
23 hearing. I’m encouraged that we’re getting closer
24 to the court being able to come to us with some
25 recommendations on how to proceed. I would
— Key [email protected] 29
1 certainly be hopeful that between now and the next
2 time we’re together, next February or so, that
3 we’ll be in a position where we can move forward
4 with a plan of action.
5 Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
6 Thank you, Chief Justice.
7 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Just on the
8 seniors, they are the ones that help us get through
9 the problem or the situation where a judge retires
10 and the Governor and the senators do not appoint a
11 full-time person. We can take a senior judge,
12 either a magistrate or a Common Pleas Court judge,
13 and we use them to fill in where it’s needed.
14 There’s about 200 judges who are
15 as senior judges in our court system, and
16 I think their per diem is set by the statute. So
17 they get a per diem; really, it’s their salary for
18 one day’s pay. We would have a difficult time
19 functioning without that line item. There’s also a
20 line item in our budget for senior judges.
21 REPRESENTATIVE GRELL: I believe they’re
22 limited in the number of days that they can serve
23 without jeopardizing their pension status, their
24 annuitant status. And I’m sure you’re taking that
25 into consideration when you’re looking at the
— Key Reporters [email protected] 30
1 overall workload.
2 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Yes, we do.
3 They can’t work more than 90 days without affecting
4 their pension, if I’m correct. A lot of these
5 judges will -- When we go into a county, we can
6 only say, support a senior judge for 19 days or 15
7 days, but a lot of those judges will sit anyway
8 just because they’re judges and they want to be
9 doing their job.
10 Even when they’re seniors, they’ll
11 provide free services for the state of Pennsylvania
12 in each county. I don’t know if it’s they want to
13 get away from their wives or husbands or something,
14 but they are willing to step up to the plate and
15 actually give days of service for gratis.
16 REPRESENTATIVE GRELL: We certainly
17 appreciate that they’re doing that. Thank you very
18 much, Chief Justice. And thank you, Mr. Chairman.
19 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
20 Representative. Representative Mike Carroll.
21 REPRESENTATIVE CARROLL: Thank you, Mr.
22 Chairman. Mr. Chief Justice, Justice Eakin,
23 gentlemen, thank you for being here today.
24 I ’ ll start, Mr. Chief Justice, with a
25 thank you. It was last year at this time that we
— Key [email protected] 31
1 had a discussion relative to the magisterial
2 district judge maps in Luzerne County, and the
3 Court's timely disposition of that matter was
4 helpful to all of us back in Luzerne County with
5 respect to the subsequent election. So, my thanks
6 on behalf of the citizens of greater Pittston and
7 Luzerne County with respect to the maps.
8 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: You're welcome.
9 REPRESENTATIVE CARROLL: As a resident
10 of Luzerne County, Mr. Chief Justice, I paid close
11 attention to the Judicial Conduct Board and the
12 circumstances surrounding all that's transpired in
13 Luzerne County over the last four or five years and
14 watched carefully the discussion in the Senate
15 recently that the Appropriations Committee had
16 relative to the Judicial Conduct Board.
17 It was surprising to me to hear about
18 the increase in complaints that have been filed to
19 the board. Can that be quantified in any way? Do
20 you have a sense, Mr. Chief Justice, of how many
21 new complaints come to the Judicial Conduct Board
22 year over year?
23 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: The conduct
24 board puts out their report every year, and it's
25 available publicly, so we can certainly supply you
— Key [email protected] 32
1 with that.
2 Bob, did they just come out with a new
3 one?
4 HONORABLE GRACI: We're in the process
5 now, Mr. Chief Justice.
6 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: That's Robert
7 Graci, who is Chief Counsel for the Judicial
8 Conduct Board.
9 About two-thirds of these things are
10 filed by prisoners who are unhappy over their
11 sentence and they believe it was some kind of
12 conspiracy between the judge and their lawyer. We
13 get a lot of them from domestic relations, which
14 can be very testy at times. They only end up
15 trying about two or three judges per year, bringing
16 it before the board.
17 Then there's the federal government,
18 who's pretty active in that area also.
19 REPRESENTATIVE CARROLL: I guess what I
20 wanted to focus on was the intervening step between
21 the filing of the complaint and then the trial of a
22 particular justice, and that is the investigations.
23 It seems to me that a thorough investigation, at
24 least of the complaints that come in that may not
25 be just from inmates, may be helpful with respect
— Key [email protected] 33
1 to trying to minimize the likelihood of another
2 recurrence as we had in northeastern Pennsylvania.
3 I’ m wondering whether or not the
4 appropriation and the attention paid to the
5 investigations is adequate in your opinion?
6 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: They haven’t
7 gotten to me yet, so I guess it’s pretty adequate.
8 JUSTICE EAKIN: I’m sure they can always
9 use another couple investigators, if only to
10 expedite things, because it’s not an easy thing to
11 do with an eye towards getting truthful
12 information.
13 Luzerne is a classic example of a
14 judge’s bullying, if you will, other people into
15 silence, and you do want to avoid that. So, how
16 you go about the investigation without destroying
17 the chances of a successful investigation is
18 significant.
19 It’s important, the investigation, one,
20 to determine if there’s anything to it. But if
21 there is something to it, to distinguish between,
22 as my wife says, stupid and evil. People do make
23 mistakes, and that’s one thing and one result in
24 criminal court and in judicial conduct. Evil is
25 quite another. Any investigation with an eye
— Key [email protected] 34
1 towards that, I think is significant.
2 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Judge Graci has
3 given me the figures. He's a retired judge. Last
4 year there were 660 complaints to the conduct board
5 open. I'm sorry. 2012, there were 660. 2013,
6 there's 784.
7 REPRESENTATIVE CARROLL: Thank you. I
8 fully understand that the additional investigations
9 come with a cost, and as somebody who is on the
10 Appropriations Committee, easily can reconcile what
11 that means.
12 But, considering the stain that was
13 placed on the court system in Luzerne County and,
14 essentially, across the state, I think it's
15 probably a worthy investment and something that the
16 Appropriations Committee ought to contemplate and
17 the judiciary ought to contemplate as well with
18 respect to allocation of resources. Thank you
19 both.
20 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Both of those
21 agencies are independent of us, but we've also
22 included in the budget request increases for the
23 Court of Judicial Discipline and the Judicial
24 Conduct Board so they can carry out their
25
— Key Reporters [email protected] 35
1 JUDGE LAZARUS: I would just add, as the
2 chair of the conduct board, that we thank you very
3 much for your interest in the conduct board. Our
4 status since 2005, we have increased every year in
5 the number of complaints that have been filed with
6 the conduct board. We currently have a relatively
7 limited staff, and we do very well with the staff
8 that we have, but we would sure like to have at
9 least two additional staff members.
10 What happens is, for every of the 800
11 complaints that we receive, every single one of
12 them must be investigated every year. We can
13 determine whether they’re valid or invalid
14 complaints, but we can’t afford to let a complaint
15 go by without investigating it, just in case it
16 becomes a Luzerne County case.
17 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Excuse me.
18 If you would, state your name so we know who -
19 HONORABLE LAZARUS: Judge Anne
20 Lazarus. I am the chair of the conduct board
21 currently. Thank you.
22 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: My kids
23 didn’t listen to me much. I’m sure judges aren’t
24 going to listen to me. But I would appreciate it,
25 if this has to go on, I don’t mind the other
— Key [email protected] 36
1 testimony, but we need to identify you. Thank you.
2 HONORABLE LAZARUS: Thank you.
3 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: I would just
4 like to say, in Luzerne County, with respect to
5 President Judge Burke, when he was appointed to go
6 in there in a very difficult situation, we had him
7 report to us every two months about what they were
8 doing in Luzerne County to counter what had
9 occurred up there previously. He's done a
10 marvelous job in getting that court system back to
11 what it should have been and what it is now. So,
12 he deserves the respect of the citizens of Luzerne
13 County for that.
14 REPRESENTATIVE CARROLL: I agree with
15 you, Mr. Chief Justice. President Judge Burke and
16 the new bench that exists in Luzerne County has
17 done a wonderful job. Thank you very much, and
18 thank you for the attention to the Judicial Conduct
19 Board.
20 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
21 Representative. Next question will be by
22 Representative Donna Oberlander.
23 REPRESENTATIVE OBERLANDER: Thank you,
24 Chairman. Good afternoon.
25 Your budget request funding to
— Key [email protected] 37
1 transition local Clerk of Courts, prothonotaries
2 and their key deputies to the Unified Judicial
3 System, could you explain a little bit more about
4 this transition and the time line involved?
5 JUSTICE EAKIN: The transition is from
6 local officials with local political ties and local
7 agendas, if you will, to a more uniform and,
8 hopefully, professional approach to the job
9 statewide. And I don’t say that with any
10 disrespect for all the elected officials. By and
11 large, they do a fine job. But everybody does it
12 differently, and everybody has different quirks and
13 different ways they do things.
14 We’ve just tried to complete a study to
15 determine the number of civil cases that have
16 languished more than two years statewide, county by
17 county. We came up with a county that said theirs
18 were zero. Well, we know that’s not true. And
19 when you talk to the PJ, they will not be given the
20 figures by the Clerk of Courts or the Prothonotary
21 of their county.
22 We have another one where the statistics
23 are outrageous in the other directions. Two-thirds
24 or more of their cases show up as -
25 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: 80 percent.
— Key [email protected] 38
1 JUSTICE EAKIN: 80 percent show up as
2 being overage. And, again, they can't get the
3 numbers from the local elected officials.
4 Now, these are extremes, of course.
5 But, frankly, these are filing officials. These
6 are people who accept filings, docket them and
7 route the paper; again, some with great efficiency,
8 some with less efficiency.
9 But what was necessary for the system a
10 hundred years ago or 50 years ago does not seem to
11 be nearly as significant anymore, particularly
12 given automation where things are more and more
13 filed electronically. They are maintained
14 electronically; they're passed electronically, and
15 the need for someone to examine them with the sword
16 of independence as their claim to fame has passed.
17 It really has.
18 The transition would be to make them
19 state employees and, certainly, under the control
20 of the President Judge and professionals. And the
21 hope is that this will allow much greater
22 efficiency; much less nepotism, if you will;
23 getting people who are there trained on their
24 merits, and, in the end, it should be a major
25 improvement in efficiency.
— Key Reporters [email protected] 39
1 As far as cost, in the great scheme of
2 things, it isn’t going to be a lot. It will be
3 transferred to the state, but the savings in other
4 areas to the state will offset. I think it’s all
5 but a million and a half, I think, is the number.
6 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: The amount of
7 money that would cover them is presently given to
8 the counties by the state, and that would just be
9 transferred to the judiciary to cover those state
10 employees.
11 The County Commissioners Association has
12 voted to support this, as has about two-thirds of
13 the clerks and prothies when we’ve gone to their
14 association and explained to them what they do.
15 There’s a counter to this, too. If
16 they’re really good, we’d like to keep them in the
17 system rather than having them be voted out of the
18 system. They come in as professionals who know
19 their job, and they can do it efficiently. We
20 believe it would be a win-win situation in helping
21 court unification.
22 REPRESENTATIVE OBERLANDER: Thank you.
23 I do appreciate the CCAP supports that and that
24 their fees will be transitioned. You also had a
25 309, 000-dollar line item for your court
— Key [email protected] 40
1 administrators to assist in this transition. Do
2 you expect that to be a one-time thing; and once
3 it's transitioned, it would go forward without
4 that?
5 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: That's actually
6 to increase the staff, because we will need more
7 supervision of the -
8 MR. PINES: An additional 200 employees
9 eventually.
10 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Mr. Pines says
11 there will be 200 additional employees who will
12 come into our system if it comes to pass. That
13 number is just for supervisory personnel; not for
14 the salaries and benefits, which will be countered
15 by less funding to the counties to pay for their
16 court services, basically.
17 REPRESENTATIVE OBERLANDER: Lastly, I'm
18 sure that in this transition you thought about
19 retirement and the pension issues that we're
20 already facing. I'm sure you factored that in; am
21 I correct?
22 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Yes, you're
23 correct. We've done this previously with the court
24 administrators in each of the counties. We
25 absorbed them into system. We looked at their
— Key [email protected] 41
1 pension, retirements, credits they have, things
2 like that. That has been a pretty good situation.
3 Now we have a person in each county who’s our
4 employee that can bring to us any problems that
5 might have.
6 Unfortunately, Luzerne County, that
7 clerk also got arrested for embezzling funds. So,
8 it wasn’t a good situation for us at all in that
9 county.
10 REPRESENTATIVE OBERLANDER: Thank you
11 very much. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
13 Representative. The next question will be asked by
14 Representative Kula.
15 REPRESENTATIVE KULA: Thank you, Mr.
16 Chairman. Good afternoon, Chief Justice, Justice
17 Eakin, Administrator Pines. Good to see all of you
18 again.
19 You know I’m going to bring up about the
20 MDJs. I believe, Chief Justice, you said there are
21 no MDJs now that are seeking re-election
22 encumbrance against each other; is that correct?
23 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: I think there’s
24 one county, Northampton County. I believe that’s
25 the only county.
— Key [email protected] 42
1 REPRESENTATIVE KULA: I’m just glad to
2 see that it’s stretched out over a period of time.
3 I believe the last ten will be by 2018. I know we
4 had many conversations in the beginning of my
5 tenure here about trying to do that by attrition.
6 I know the caseloads and what they do and how busy
7 their offices are. Adding more to it, I just hope
8 that we are not -
9 I know it’s very difficult because,
10 everybody that comes into those offices, that case
11 is important to them, even though it may seem minor
12 to everyone else. It is not a homicide, but to
13 that person, that case is the most important thing
14 in their life at that time. To allow everyone to
15 have the opportunity to have their day in court and
16 to be heard and have the time to do that, that’s
17 what I hope will never go away; that district
18 judges are not going to be so overwhelmed by
19 caseload that that opportunity for everyone that
20 comes before them to have their day in court and
21 heard fully will ever go away. That’s just a
22 little opinion on my part.
23 Also, I ’ m totally not understanding the
24 transition of the Clerk of Courts and Prothonotary,
25 and I have had a lot of questions back in my home
— Key [email protected] 43
1 county. These are elected officials right now.
2 How is that going to change? Are they now going to
3 be phased out as elected officials and they're
4 appointed to those offices, or how is that working?
5 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: They'll finish
6 their term, and then they'll be able to cycle into
7 the court system, if they so wish.
8 REPRESENTATIVE KULA: Cycle, meaning
9 automatically staying within that position?
10 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Just as the
11 clerk of courts did. We took them all as they were
12 and brought them into the system. The same thing
13 will happen to the -
14 REPRESENTATIVE KULA: You mean the court
15 administrator; when you brought them in? Yes.
16 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: You're correct,
17 the court administrators. The same thing will
18 happen with the prothies and the clerk of courts.
19 Let me just say, your court, when you
20 were on that, that court is the front-line court in
21 Pennsylvania. That's the one that most people will
22 see in the system. In the 21 years I've been on
23 this court, we've done a lot to professionalize and
24 upgrade how they're treated in the system, how
25 those judges are treated. We've made it more
— Key [email protected] 44
1 professional in the system. We've cooperated with
2 them in judicial education. They received training
3 over in our building over there every year, as they
4 must. So, they are an important court in our
5 system. I can tell you that on my part, on Mike's
6 part and on our whole court's part.
7 And it is a matter of fairness, too. We
8 did this 10 years ago. I wasn't in charge of it.
9 There were a lot more districts where a magistrate
10 ran against a magistrate, yours including. But,
11 this time we wanted to make it more fair. We would
12 take that district and absorb the district or
13 it upon the leaving, a death,
14 retirement, whatever, of the magistrates. We
15 didn't have the chaos that we had 10 years ago, but
16 we did end up with the one county where we had two
17 magistrates having to run against each other.
18 REPRESENTATIVE KULA: I appreciate what
19 you have done and, hopefully, we won' t have to do
20 this again.
21 Also, the computer system. I can tell
22 you, I started out as someone that had the
23 pegboards, and when a payment was made, you had to
24 divvy it up into every little section. I can tell
25 you what an advancement it has been to the system
— Key Reporters [email protected] 45
1 for the computer system coming in. I know that
2 other states are envious of what this Commonwealth
3 has done as far as computerizing their judicial
4 system.
5 I’m looking forward to the expansion and
6 giving the other courts the opportunity to kind of
7 interact with each other, to have that opportunity
8 to be able to find something without searching
9 forever; enter in a name or a docket number and
10 you’re good to go. So, we commend the AOPC for
11 their efforts and the Supreme Court for what
12 they’ve done.
13 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: When I talk to
14 the magistrates, to a person, they say they
15 couldn’t survive the system without that
16 computerization. We just finished or are almost
17 finishing the re-update of the magisterial district
18 system’s computers from 15 years ago. A lot of
19 people say, when is it going to be over? It’s
20 really never over, given the modern times we face
21 and the volume of cases that we face and the people
22 that we deal with, from the state police, the
23 prisons, everybody, transportation, et cetera.
24 REPRESENTATIVE KULA: Well, and being
25 24-hour courts, it was invaluable as far as when it
— Key [email protected] 46
1 was your turn for night duty, or whatever, to be
2 able to have access to dockets that were not really
3 filed within your own court. So, it’s been an
4 invaluable addition to the court system.
5 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: If I might,
6 Chairman, one of the most important things is, that
7 funding that was supplied by our legislative budget
8 for court security has put videoconferencing
9 equipment in every magisterial district judges’
10 chambers or homes in the state of Pennsylvania. We
11 are so far ahead in that and being able to
12 videoconference.
13 One year, when we looked at the numbers
14 saved in just transporting prisoners, we saved $21
15 million in the statee budget; not our money, but
16 the constables transporting people, sheriffs
17 transporting people. It about $500, on average,
18 for a prisoner to be transported by a sheriff from
19 a prison or a jail to some other place.
20 Just recently, I was invited by the
21 Attorney General of the United States to come down
22 and show to the rest of the states and give them a
23 demonstration of what we are doing in Pennsylvania
24 to helping court security in these little
25 out-of-the-way courtrooms that the magisterial
— Key [email protected] 47
1 justice has; about how advanced we are in
2 videoconferencing and how much that is saving our
3 state. They hope to replicate that to all the
4 other 50 states and Puerto Rico and the Virgin
5 Islands and Guam and American Samoa also.
6 So, we are leading there, too, and
7 that's a result of that appropriation originally
8 started about four or five years ago. I think it
9 was $5 million. So, you're responsible for that
10 also.
11 REPRESENTATIVE KULA: Well, all of that
12 came after my time, and I was still one that was
13 traveling to my office at 3 o' clock in the morning
14 to arraign someone. So, we do appreciate your
15 knowing the importance of the MDJs and the upgrades
16 that you have done for them and their systems.
17 Thank you so much.
18 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: You're welcome.
19 REPRESENTATIVE KULA: Thank you, Mr.
20 Chairman.
21 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
22 Representative. At this time, I'd like to
23 acknowledge the presence of former Senate Majority
24 Leader Joseph Loeper.
25 The next question will be by
— Key [email protected] 48
1 Representative Curt Sonney.
2 REPRESENTATIVE SONNEY: Thank you, Mr.
3 Chairman. Justices.
4 I noticed that you have a request for
5 1. 5 million for a grant program for interpreters;
6 grants from the assets from the county level; is
7 that correct?
8 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: That’s correct.
9 That would be a pass-through to the counties on an
10 as-needed basis in the counties. That only covers
11 about half the cost of interpreting services in the
12 counties as we speak.
13 The reason we have that in there is
14 because the Attorney General of the United States,
15 through Deputy Attorney General, has threatened to
16 reduce all federal funding to each state unless
17 each state complies with an extensive use of
18 interpreters at every level of the court system,
19 including from walking in the courthouse door. It
20 was so extensive that, even if the person was in a
21 civil case and could afford their own interpreter,
22 under this directive from the U. S. Government
23 dumping it on us, if we did not comply with what
24 they thought the Civil Rights Act of 1967 said,
25 then they’re going to cut off all funding to the
— Key [email protected] 49
1 state of Pennsylvania; all federal funding.
2 That is why we are trying to comply with
3 those somewhat onerous requirements forced upon the
4 states by our friends in the federal government,
5 particularly the U.S. Attorney General’s office,
6 and, I imagine, through the President.
7 Now, it is an Access to Justice
8 question, and we have extensive interpreter
9 services. We have a program with the Widener law
10 school or Widener University that certify
11 interpreters. We have a pay scale for them. We
12 have tests that they have to take to receive their
13 certification so that they can actually be
14 interpreters.
15 Back when I was an assistant D.A., we’d
16 have some Spanish person on trial or as a victim,
17 and the sister or brother would be the translator.
18 Usually, it didn’t work out too well. There’d be
19 one question and the two of them would be talking
20 back and forth for about 10 minutes, and the
21 interpreter would turn and say, he said yes.
22 REPRESENTATIVE SONNEY: Do you have an
23 idea of what’s spent today?
24 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: $3 million,
25 approximately, in the state.
— Key [email protected] 50
1 REPRESENTATIVE SONNEY: And you are
2 requesting is to use it as a grant program, and did
3 you say first come, first serve?
4 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: On a matter of
5 need. It depends on the population of your various
6 counties. I think somebody once told me there’s
7 like 67 different languages spoken in the state of
8 Pennsylvania. Obviously, the areas with the
9 largest amount of non-English-speaking individuals
10 would be the most qualified to receive these funds.
11 REPRESENTATIVE SONNEY: Can we assume
12 that the need has increased year after year?
13 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: I think so, if
14 we get more undocumented individuals. I’m not sure
15 what the word is.
16 JUSTICE EAKIN: People who don’t speak
17 English.
18 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Non-English as
19 a second language; or not even as a language. You
20 have more of them that are coming into the United
21 States, and you can just read the papers. We don’t
22 keep track of that ourselves.
23 REPRESENTATIVE SONNEY: What you’re
24 saying is, if somebody comes in front of you and
25 they cannot speak English, it’s up to you to
— Key [email protected] 51
1 provide them with the interpreter?
2 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Correct. We do
3 that as a matter of course, generally, but we only
4 do it for individuals who can’t afford -- If
5 they’re charged with a crime, then that’s where the
6 interpreters come in.
7 Civil stuff is totally different because
8 we depend on the attorneys, or whoever represents
9 those individuals, to be able to interpret for them
10 or get somebody that will interpret for them. The
11 one difficulty you have is, individuals that can’t
12 afford an attorney and cannot speak English but are
13 in dire need of court services, so that makes it
14 very difficult for the court system to deliver
15 justice in their case.
16 REPRESENTATIVE SONNEY: But do you look
17 at the federal requirement as one that requires you
18 to provide that interpreter, regardless of whether
19 or not they have the capabilities to pay for it on
20 their own?
21 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: That’s correct.
22 That’s why I used the word onerous.
23 REPRESENTATIVE SONNEY: I’d second that.
24 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
25 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you,
— Key [email protected] 52
1 Representative. Representative Jake Wheatley.
2 REPRESENTATIVE WHEATLEY: Thank you, Mr.
3 Chairman. Good afternoon, gentlemen.
4 I wanted to kind of go to the problem
5 solving courts. I noticed in your budget you don't
6 really ask for anything additional for the courts.
7 Is that because, right now you're not seeing a
8 major request for more courts or the need is not
9 there anymore for the expansion of courts?
10 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Generally, they
11 use existing judges and court personnel, and it's a
12 diversionary program in each county that has these.
13 And the counties see the benefits of them because
14 there's some quantification that every dollar spent
15 in these kinds of courts saves you, like, three
16 dollars, four dollars, five dollars down the line,
17 and other costs, as if you went to the regular
18 court system.
19 So, most of these are picked up by the
20 counties voluntarily, assuming these different
21 courts and using them as problem-solving courts is
22 what they are. They're not really to punish
23 somebody. They're just trying to straighten them
24 out. The different court systems have embraced
25 these types of courts not only as cost-saving but
— Key [email protected] 53
1 as humanitarian-type things to save somebody’s life
2 and get them on the right track; save their home.
3 I think we requested some money for a
4 study to try to determine the effectiveness of
5 these courts. I think we got 400,000 from the
6 federal government or somebody; PCCD, one of those
7 things.
8 But, yes, that’s an example of the
9 courts reacting to a situation and coming up with a
10 solution that’s cost-effective, but it doesn’t cost
11 any more money because it’s just looking at the
12 problem differently.
13 REPRESENTATIVE WHEATLEY: If, in fact,
14 they are savers of taxpayers’ dollars, has there
15 ever been a conversation, from a statewide-system
16 perspective, that an investment could help expand
17 and normalize their conducts throughout the
18 counties; as a way to support the counties, so it
19 wouldn’t just be the counties financing it or
20 through our Commission of Crime and Delinquency,
21 but that we would have a state-wide effort to
22 really try to impact diversion instead of
23 punishment?
24 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: That’s what
25 we’re attempting to do. Twenty-one counties have
— Key [email protected] 54
1 these mortgage foreclosure courts. I think we're
2 up to 20-some odd veterans courts. There's
3 juvenile delinquency courts. There's DUI courts.
4 There's mental health courts. Over a hundred now.
5 We see the benefit of these things, and it saves
6 people's lives.
7 I see the veterans court in Philadelphia
8 all the time; me being a veteran, having served
9 honorably in the U. S. Marine Corps in combat in
10 Vietnam. I see some of these kids coming back from
11 Afghanistan, personally, and I see that they've
12 fallen by the wayside.
13 The one in Philadelphia that I' m
14 personally familiar with has done a great service
15 in turning some of these men and women -- For the
16 first time ever, we are seeing more women veterans
17 who are homeless or who are on the streets or who
18 have gotten addicted to drugs or alcohol and have
19 served their country honorably. So that's quite a
20 different thing than we saw after the Vietnam War.
21 REPRESENTATIVE WHEATLEY: I want to
22 thank you for your service. I also served in the
23 United States Marine Corps, so Semper Fi.
24 If I can switch and take us back to a
25 very dark time just a couple of years ago with the
— Key [email protected] 55
1 Kids For Cash incident in Luzerne County, I know
2 the courts acted immediately to try to make sure
3 this doesn't happen again. Can you tell me a
4 little bit about what changes happened?
5 And from a legislative point, just from
6 what I was looking, I know one of the
7 recommendations was to try to make sure no one
8 waived their rights coming into the court system.
9 Then there was a question about, how do you pay for
10 that representation? Is it left to the counties or
11 should the state also kick in to provide for
12 support?
13 Can you tell me where you are with that
14 and any suggestions that we could play in helping?
15 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: When that
16 happened, we, of course, were shocked at the
17 enormity of those crimes by those two judges, and
18 it really reflects on the entire court system. It
19 was a huge black eye.
20 As soon as we saw that had happened, we
21 immediately put together, with the Governor and the
22 legislative branch, the Interbranch Commission on
23 Juvenile Justice. I believe 18 individuals under
24 the leadership of Judge John Cleveland, they went
25 up there and they looked at the entire system.
— Key [email protected] 56
1 They came back to us with 54 different
2 recommendations of amendments to the Juvenile
3 Justice Code and the Appellate Courts Code,
4 including making sure that these kids don’t waive
5 their constitutional rights knowingly.
6 We instituted those 54 changes. The
7 legislature provided a fund to reimburse the
8 victims of the child from the criminal conduct, and
9 that has been completed by Judge Arthur Grim of
10 Berks. We sent Judge Grim in there to look at
11 every case that Ciavarella or Conahan sat on, to
12 review it to see if — We told him frankly, Judge
13 Grim, if you review every one of these cases and
14 you do not believe justice was done, tell us and
15 the court, and we will take the appropriate action.
16 Judge Grim did, in fact, come to the Supreme Court
17 and say, I do not believe justice happened to any
18 of those kids.
19 We expunged the record of every one of
20 the kids who ended up in front of either of those
21 two judges; that is, we erased their records so
22 that they would have a chance to lead a productive
23 life. That number was 2,401 kids whose records
24 that we expunged.
25 Now, that’s not going to take away what
— Key [email protected] 57
1 happened to them, and some of the results were
2 tragic. They can never been compensated. We did
3 that because we want to make sure a tragedy like
4 that never happens anywhere else in the state of
5 Pennsylvania.
6 REPRESENTATIVE WHEATLEY: Thank you.
7 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
8 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you.
9 The Chair has been advised that former State
10 Representative George Kenney has joined us. I know
11 he’s a friend of the Chief Justice.
12 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Absolutely.
13 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: The next
14 question will be by Representative Dean.
15 REPRESENTATIVE DEAN: Thank you, Mr.
16 Chairman. Mr. Justice, Mr. Chief Justice,
17 gentlemen, how do you do? Good afternoon. Over
18 here.
19 My first question has to do with
20 something that’s been brought to my attention by my
21 local police department. It has to do with the
22 acronym LEJIS, Law Enforcement Justice Information
23 System. I believe it’s under JNET.
24 So my ultimate question is going to be,
25 within your appropriation, is there room in your
— Key [email protected] 58
1 budget for the continued funding of this LEJIS
2 project? What it is, as I understand it, is, down
3 in the southeast, post-9/11, federal dollars were
4 used to try to integrate records management systems
5 of police departments so that, if a municipality
6 had stopped a person in their municipality, they
7 could check across the state, across
8 municipalities, to see if other municipalities had
9 any interaction with the person or the car or
10 whatever it might be. Apparently, it’s been quite
11 successful in the southeast and expanded a little
12 beyond the southeast.
13 But the federal dollars are drying up,
14 as my police chief and deputy chief explained to
15 me. They have put together sort of a business plan
16 to say, they need another 400, 000 or more dollars
17 to continue this so that it becomes statewide.
18 So I’ m wondering, are you aware of the
19 LEJIS project? Is it something that’s going to be
20 able to be funded through line items, either JNET
21 or somewhere else, in your appropriations?
22 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: We generally
23 don’t fund executive branch agencies, which all
24 those police officers sound like they’re a part of.
25 That would have to be a different appropriation or
— Key [email protected] 59
1 a federal grant, as you say, so we don’t do that.
2 But our computer system is available
3 through the JNET, and that is what the troopers use
4 when they’re in their cars making stops. All of
5 the criminal justice information goes to the FBI
6 and the state troopers. I don’t know if it’s
7 available locally. Mike, do you know?
8 REPRESENTATIVE DEAN: This was that
9 idea; to make it a seamless coordination between
10 state police and the municipalities so that all the
11 information could be shared.
12 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: If they have
13 access to National Center -- What is it?
14 JUSTICE EAKIN: NCIC.
15 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: NCIC gets our
16 information also. The state troopers would have
17 it. It would be available to other police officers
18 who can access JNET. But, we would have to look
19 into that. We’ll check it out and get back to you.
20 REPRESENTATIVE DEAN: I’ll share the
21 information with you. That would be great.
22 JUSTICE EAKIN: Too many acronyms and I
23 start fogging over.
24 REPRESENTATIVE DEAN: I completely agree
25 with you, Mr. Justice.
— Key [email protected] 60
1 JUSTICE EAKIN: I think that's one that
2 is a law enforcement interface, which is not our
3 business. Our system would be triggered if
4 somebody was arrested but not just by an
5 interaction with a police officer.
6 REPRESENTATIVE DEAN: And it goes beyond
7 that. I was just using that as one example. So,
8 thank you. I'll share that information with your
9 department. They just tell me it's critically
10 important. It has saved an awful lot of public
11 safety issues.
12 JUSTICE EAKIN: It is.
13 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Absolutely.
14 REPRESENTATIVE DEAN: Then my other only
15 question is, last year I offered House Resolution
16 107, which is something I' m deeply interested in.
17 What it would do is, it actually would urge the
18 Supreme Court to require new lawyers to complete 50
19 hours pro bono service as a requirement for
20 admission to the Bar. We've seen other states do
21 this; notably, New York, with the greatest number
22 of lawyers.
23 What it does is, it attempts to do a few
24 things: Get experience for young lawyers starting
25 out so they'll be more competitive in the job
— Key [email protected] 61
1 market; of course, try to close the Access to
2 Justice, for those who are poor, gap; and also
3 instill, hopefully, in the new practitioners the
4 will and the want to do public service work.
5 I' m wondering if you have any ideas on
6 that, and I ask for your consideration and I ask
7 for your support of that.
8 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: One thing that
9 we do to help legal services and the law schools
10 is, the attorneys pay $200 a year to be an
11 attorney, the licensing fee. We supply each law
12 school, seven or eight, how many there are now,
13 $200, 000 each to run these clinical programs where
14 the law students actually, under the tutelage of a
15 law professor or an attorney who is running these
16 programs, provide legal services to the indigent in
17 the different communities and where these law
18 schools are.
19 We even encourage the graduates of law
20 schools to work in these agencies by what we call
21 the Loan Repayment Assistance Program, which is
22 funded by pro hac vice filing fees, which is Latin
23 for whatever it means. But it means when you come
24 from another -
25 (Laughter) .
— Key [email protected] 62
1 JUSTICE EAKIN: Lawyers from out of
2 state.
3 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: That’s not the
4 literal translation, but that’s what it -
5 JUSTICE EAKIN: For hacks that live
6 here.
7 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: But they have
8 to pay a filing fee to file cases in Pennsylvania,
9 $200 each, the same thing as a lawyer has to pay to
10 be a lawyer in Pennsylvania. We take that and we
11 apply it to repaying the loans of these kids that
12 come out of law school with pretty deep debt, to
13 the tune of $4,500 -- I’m sorry. 3,500 the first
14 year for the loan repayment assistance if you work
15 in one of these agencies that provides legal
16 services; $4, 500 the second year; and $6, 000 the
17 third year, and you can get that up to 10 years.
18 So, that provides $54, 000 in loan forgiveness as
19 long as these kids are employed in these legal
20 services programs.
21 On the legal fees, the registration fees
22 that the lawyers have to pay, $25 of every $200
23 goes to fund legal services programs through our
24 Interest on Lawyers Trust Accounts. This last year
25 we added another $10 to it, to the registration
— Key [email protected] 63
1 fee. Not to 210, but we took $10 from the 175 left
2 over from the 25. So, every lawyer pays $35 to
3 fund legal services in Pennsylvania.
4 We also have a pretty active pro bono
5 program throughout the state of Pennsylvania,
6 especially in some of these speciality court
7 programs like the home mortgage programs. We are
8 reviewing those things. We see what New York State
9 is doing to provide pro bono legal services; to
10 have a 50-hour requirement before you can even take
11 the Bar Association, but there's problems
12 associated with that also.
13 So, it's not a win-win situation. It's
14 a situation we are looking at on the court to see
15 if it's appropriate for us.
16 JUSTICE EAKIN: It's difficult with
17 implementation when you're talking about recent
18 graduates who are at their lowest skill level they
19 will ever be. So, somebody has got to ride herd on
20 them, and it's as much finding someone to monitor
21 what they're doing, to find them clients to be
22 serving and the like, and then keeping track of the
23 hours and all.
24 It's also kind of difficult in this job
25 market, when the kids are coming out loaded with
— Key [email protected] 64
1 debt and are happy to find a job, and then tell
2 their employer, well, I need about a month to do my
3 pro bono work before I can work for you. I'm not
4 saying it's undoable, but it isn't quite as simple
5 as one would hope it would be.
6 REPRESENTATIVE DEAN: I do understand
7 some of the problems, and I' ve talked to different
8 deans of law schools. To your point, Mr. Chief
9 Justice, many of the students are already doing
10 this. So, in my estimation, what I think we ought
11 to do is consider if it ought to be one of the
12 court requirements for sitting for the Bar or
13 becoming an attorney. I think it has so many
14 valuable outcomes and offshoots. The biggest one
15 is Access to Justice for those who just simply
16 can't afford it.
17 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: As Justice
18 Eakin said, he's on the board of a law school.
19 What law school is that? Do you want to give them
20 a plug?
21 JUSTICE EAKIN: The Dickinson School of
22 Law of Penn State University, yes.
23 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Here at
24 Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
25 REPRESENTATIVE DEAN: So I urge your
— Key [email protected] 65
1 further consideration of my resolution.
2 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: We’ll
3 definitely look at it, But pro bono means for good
4 or for free. So, pro bono means you want to do it
5 because you want to do it; not because you have to
6 do it. So it’s really not pro bono anymore when
7 you have to do it. You’re not getting paid for it,
8 but it’s not the same mentality as you wanting to
9 go out and help somebody.
10 REPRESENTATIVE DEAN: Thank you, Mr.
11 Chief Justice.
12 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you.
13 Representative Michael O ’Brien.
14 REPRESENTATIVE O ’BRIEN: Thank you, Mr.
15 Chairman. Your Honors, welcome. Thank you for
16 joining us today.
17 As we go through this, being a
18 guttersnipe from the Fishtown section of
19 Philadelphia, you’re gonna have to go slowly, and
20 you’re gonna have to take me by the hand on this.
21 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Fishtown is one
22 of the hot spots in Philadelphia. What are you
23 talking about?
24 (Laughter) .
25 REPRESENTATIVE O ’BRIEN: Once upon a
— Key [email protected] 66
1 time, Chief, it weren’t so good.
2 So, let’s talk about Philadelphia
3 Traffic Court, if we can, for a moment. It’s my
4 understanding that that court was established by
5 the Constitution of the Commonwealth of
6 Pennsylvania. And if that be the case, explain to
7 me how it can be disbanded statutorily.
8 JUSTICE EAKIN: It hasn’t been
9 disbanded. It has been moved under the umbrella of
10 the municipal court. The seven spots are now
11 filled by two municipal court judges and five
12 hearing officers who are doing the work for it.
13 REPRESENTATIVE O ’BRIEN: So the five
14 appointed hearing officers are removing or in place
15 of duly-elected traffic court judges?
16 JUSTICE EAKIN: They are hearing cases.
17 They do not have full judicial powers. They have
18 no contempt power or the like. They’re hearing
19 cases; making decisions. And if you’ve watched the
20 process of traffic court, it is not, for the most
21 part, like a courtroom you see on TV. It is a
22 presentation by one officer of many cases, by
23 reading the citation, listening to the defense, if
24 any, and a decision. It is not necessarily the
25 taking of testimony and the like. Whether it
— Key [email protected] 67
1 should have been, it has not been for many years.
2 When you get seven constitutional judges
3 and nine of them indicted, something had to be
4 done. This I look at as a transitional state while
5 the legislature considers legislation that would
6 propose an amendment to the Constitution to do this
7
8 The Supreme Court, incidentally, a dozen
9 years ago, was faced with a similar court; not a
10 similar problem but a similar court in Pittsburgh
11 that was established by Constitution. And,
12 essentially, by court order, moved it to the status
13 of magisterial district judges as opposed to the
14 Pittsburgh -- I' m blanking on the official name of
15 that court.
16 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Municipal Court
17 of Pittsburgh.
18 JUSTICE EAKIN: Municipal Court of
19 Pittsburgh. And, essentially, became MDJs because
20 that was their function, even though they were in
21 the Constitution.
22 So there's some precedent for it. This
23 was done, though, by legislation; not by court
24 order. Again, I think it's a transitional phase,
25 if you will; a way of getting business done while
— Key Reporters [email protected] 68
1 the ultimate solution is working its way through
2 the process.
3 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: I’d just like
4 to add a little something. I’ve been practicing
5 law in Pennsylvania since 1971 as an assistant DA,
6 as the DA, private practice, and on the court of
7 last resort of the state. Since I’ve been involved
8 in that system, the FBI, our friends in the Federal
9 Bureau of Investigations, have come in there and
10 cleaned house; not once, not twice. This is the
11 third time that the FBI has come in and seized all
12 the records of that court, the third time.
13 You know, in baseball, three strikes and
14 you’re out. And that is, as I say, when some judge
15 gets locked up by the FBI, that’s a stain on all of
16 us. So, the way I look at it, they had their
17 chances to clean up. They haven’t. The FBI is in
18 there. Somebody’s going to pay for it. Our court
19 had to do something, something, to try to make sure
20 that does not happen again in Philadelphia or the
21 state of Pennsylvania.
22 REPRESENTATIVE O ’BRIEN: I agree with
23 you, Chief Justice, that it was a total cesspool.
24 Can’t argue about that. It was. But, let’s go
25 down. So you said that you had a court in
— Key [email protected] 69
1 Pittsburgh that was not disbanded but brought down
2 to the level of an MDJ.
3 JUSTICE EAKIN: That’s not exactly
4 accurate, and I apologize -
5 REPRESENTATIVE O ’BRIEN: I’m a
6 guttersnipe, so you have to take me by the hand.
7 JUSTICE EAKIN: Well, I’m not sure I
8 expressed it accurately, and I’ m shooting from my
9 recollection of what was done. But there was a
10 discussion about the constitutionality of doing
11 that, and the majority of the court felt that it
12 was appropriate to make that court follow the same
13 educational requirements and the like as an MDJ.
14 REPRESENTATIVE O ’BRIEN: But, in
15 essence, you replaced a court with a court,
16 correct?
17 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: No. We just
18 shifted their authority and their paychecks to
19 other people.
20 REPRESENTATIVE O ’BRIEN: But you
21 replaced a court with a court, yes?
22 JUSTICE EAKIN: I don’t think we
23 replaced a single person, as I recall.
24 REPRESENTATIVE O ’BRIEN: Okay.
25 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: That court is
— Key [email protected] 70
1 still in the Constitution, by the way. You can
2 look it up.
3 REPRESENTATIVE O'BRIEN: Okay. So,
4 final question. If, as you said, there's
5 legislation to change the Constitution regarding
6 the Philadelphia Traffic Court, the process of that
7 is that a bill must pass each chamber identically
8 in two sessions and be put to a referendum. If we
9 agree on that, then we have to agree that it's
10 probably going to take a minimum of five years for
11 this to happen, okay?
12 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: That's the
13 question right there. That's the problem. We
14 weren't going to wait for five years for the FBI to
15 come in another time if the system wasn't changed,
16 period.
17 REPRESENTATIVE O'BRIEN: I guess my
18 point, Chief Justice, is that, given the process
19 for amending the Constitution, we have a court
20 that, for the next five years or so, is going to be
21 suspended in a total void; that you're going to
22 have appointed hearing officers, opposed to elected
23 judges, and somehow it seems as though the whole
24 equation is out of balance. I'll let you answer
25 that, and that will be my final words.
— Key [email protected] 71
1 JUSTICE EAKIN: The hearing officers are
2 required to be law-trained. They must have a law
3 degree. The elected judges did not. They were
4 required to go to, basically, what, a little bit of
5 the MDJ training in Harrisburg and not the full
6 panoply of that, even, because their jurisdiction
7 was limited.
8 The anecdotal evidence and complaining
9 from those who were candidates only reaffirms my
10 belief that the court did the right thing.
11 REPRESENTATIVE O'BRIEN: Thank you,
12 gentlemen. I appreciate your time. Thank you, Mr.
13 Chairman.
14 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: Thank you.
15 The final question will be by Representative Brian
16 Ellis.
17 REPRESENTATIVE ELLIS: Thank you very
18 much, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, thank you very much
19 for being here today.
20 I want to go specifically to the recent
21 ruling that you guys made on Act 13. I'm a little
22 curious on that. I mean, obviously, between the
23 branches of government, there's always going to be
24 a little bit of sibling rivalry.
25 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: You have to
— Key [email protected] 72
1 refresh me on what Act 13 is or was.
2 REPRESENTATIVE ELLIS: It was a historic
3 piece of legislation that set out many great things
4 for the Commonwealth as far as the industry of
5 natural gas exploration in Pennsylvania was. While
6 there are still many parts of that that you guys
7 left intact, and I appreciate that, I do have some
8 questions about the process that you guys went
9 through before you made the decision.
10 Traditionally, the municipalities have
11 always been treated as a creation of the state. In
12 this ruling, it appears that the majority believed
13 that what we were doing was saying that they were
14 sovereign. That being said, that's what you ruled,
15 and that is now the way it is. The Governor asked
16 to reconsider it, and you chose not to.
17 But my questions is, since you come here
18 today in an appropriations manner and you're asking
19 for more money, how much money did you spend on
20 doing the background? Which employees of the
21 courts were the ones assigned to looking up the
22 background information for you to make your
23 decisions on that?
24 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: This is part of
25 our job. People bring cases to us. Lawyers argue
— Key [email protected] 73
1 in front of us.
2 REPRESENTATIVE ELLIS: And many times
3 you send those back down to the lower courts
4 whenever there’s fact-finding involved. And I’m
5 asking specifically, since this one didn’t get
6 remanded back, as your wisdom had it to not send it
7 back down there, who on your staff were the ones
8 that did that?
9 Because like myself, personally, and
10 many members of the legislature, we spent a great
11 deal of time on this. We had hearings all across
12 the Commonwealth for over four years. You had it
13 for a little under a year, and I was just curious
14 which persons and who did they gather the
15 information before you made your decisions.
16 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: We get it from
17 the lawyers, basically; from who argues in front of
18 us. We discuss these matters, and they go before
19 the justices, and we decide -- We do our job, and
20 we decide the cases as we see them.
21 JUSTICE EAKIN: I was in dissent.
22 REPRESENTATIVE ELLIS: Yes, you are.
23 Thank you.
24 JUSTICE EAKIN: I just want that clear
25 in case you have anything over there that’s
— Key [email protected] 74
1 throwable.
2 REPRESENTATIVE ELLIS: I will not throw
3 anything. I promise that, Justice.
4 JUSTICE EAKIN: I guess. Ours is not a
5 fact-finding body. We’re stuck with the record
6 that is brought to us. So, insofar as going back
7 to investigate, we have no people to do that. We
8 are not set up to do it, and the jurisprudence is
9 such that the record we’re given is what we’ve got,
10 period; not the record that existed at this body.
11 REPRESENTATIVE ELLIS: So, in fact,
12 whenever the decision -
13 JUSTICE EAKIN: The fact that -
14 REPRESENTATIVE ELLIS: I’m sorry.
15 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: Where’s my
16 gavel?
17 JUSTICE EAKIN: We’re used to talking
18 over people. I forget I’m in your house.
19 REPRESENTATIVE ELLIS: So are we, Mr.
20 Justice.
21 JUSTICE EAKIN: Yes, I’m in your house.
22 I apologize.
23 One of the points that was discussed was
24 the fact that this body, the legislative body, is
25 the one to conduct the hearings and get all the
— Key [email protected] 75
1 information. By all the information, I mean an
2 awful lot of things that were considered that are
3 not able to be passed to us simply because they’re
4 not in the litigation that ensued. So, all that
5 you learned and all that you heard -
6 REPRESENTATIVE ELLIS: Was not
7 necessarily all that you heard?
8 JUSTICE EAKIN: -- is not going to be in
9 front of us, and it would be improper for us to go
10 back and start picking and choosing what wasn’t in
11 front of us and considering that in any case; not
12 just this case.
13 REPRESENTATIVE ELLIS: And I appreciate
14 that. I know there was, as is often the case
15 within a ruling from the higher court, that you
16 will dissent, and there will be people that feel
17 one way or another. This certainly is a very
18 controversial thing. I just think, naturally,
19 there are a lot of folks that are curious about the
20 ramifications that are going to come down the road.
21 I guess it would be the question on an
22 appropriations standpoint, there was no more or
23 less spent on this than any other case? There was
24 no additional resources that were hired or anything
25 to that capacity?
— Key [email protected] 76
1 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: No. This was
2 all of our existing staff. I spent a lot more work
3 on it than most people because it was 165 pages of
4 opinion, including historical review of things that
5 have happened across the state of Pennsylvania in
6 the past where the environment was kind of
7 overlooked on the basis of economics. I spent a
8 lot of time on it myself, and so did my staff.
9 But that’s just the way it is. That
10 happens in every — Mike Eakin’s staff spent a lot
11 of time on his dissent. So, this is normal
12 procedure that happens. You can’t quantify it.
13 It’s just part of our entire budget process. We
14 didn’t ask for any more money or any less money
15 because of it.
16 REPRESENTATIVE ELLIS: If I can go off
17 of Act 13 for a second. Since we are talking about
18 budgets, I’ m a little curious about the nature of
19 how you guys conduct business and the cost of doing
20 that.
21 I know, over the years, we’ve had
22 testimony from you guys how you’re going to try to
23 save a little bit of money here and try to save a
24 little bit of money here, and everybody is
25 tightening where they can.
— Key [email protected] 77
1 But I'm a little curious. We have a
2 beautiful building across the street that we built
3 for you guys; $85 million of taxpayers' dollars.
4 It seems to me, from what I' m to understand, that a
5 majority of your work happens in either Pittsburgh
6 or Philadelphia. Is that not accurate? I saw a
7 shake of the head.
8 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: It happens
9 across the state, but we happen to have three
10 courtrooms: Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and
11 Harrisburg. So, it's -
12 REPRESENTATIVE ELLIS: What's the logic?
13 We don't have three House of Representatives. The
14 Senate doesn't have three Senates, but you have
15 three courtrooms.
16 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: What's the
17 logic? Nebraska only has one legislature.
18 REPRESENTATIVE ELLIS: Yeah, and there's
19 a lot of us that think we'd be okay with the
20 unicameral legislature here as well; an issue I
21 would probably support myself.
22 My comment and thought about that is, if
23 we're really looking to consolidate and save money,
24 the concept of having one location so that -- I' m
25 assuming, whenever you go out, like we do when we
— Key [email protected] 78
1 come here, we get a cost-of-living expense. I'm
2 sure you pay for your expenses in some form or
3 fashion.
4 Would it not be, in fact, easier; with
5 all the staff people already here, with the
6 building the taxpayers paid for, wouldn't it make
7 sense -- Because I just think, if I ask my
8 constituents to understand the concept that
9 sometimes I meet in Pittsburgh, sometimes I meet in
10 Harrisburg, and sometimes I meet in Philadelphia,
11 don't think that would sell very well. But if I
12 said, you know what, we're gonna trying to
13 consolidate the way we have in the legislature.
14 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: You're a local
15 legislature. We're representing the state.
16 REPRESENTATIVE ELLIS: I like to believe
17 my opinion counts for the entire state as well.
18 I'm one of 203. You're one of however many you
19 have. But the specific point -
20 JUSTICE EAKIN: Do you hold town
21 meetings or such outside of here?
22 REPRESENTATIVE ELLIS: Absolutely. Do
23 you guys hold townhall meetings?
24 JUSTICE EAKIN: No, but we sit to hear
25 cases in three different places, but -
— Key [email protected] 79
1 REPRESENTATIVE ELLIS: Well, I don't
2 vote on legislation in three different places, but
3 I do have hearings across the state.
4 But my point is, you come here and you
5 ask for additional funds, and I' m pointing out to
6 you one possible way you could save funds.
7 JUSTICE EAKIN: That might be, but you
8 don't ask your constituents to come here to talk to
9 you all the time. We have three districts, as do
10 the feds, in Pennsylvania; western, eastern, and
11 middle. And that's for the convenience of the
12 parties, because the people from Pittsburgh
13 shouldn't have to drive 200 miles to file a piece
14 of paper.
15 Now, with e-filing, that's going to
16 shift to some degree, but that's been the reality
17 for the history of the state. It's the same reason
18 we go out there. It's easier for seven of us, or
19 with the Superior Court or Commonwealth Court,
20 panels of three, to go out there. Well, Superior
21 Court, I know, hears 45 cases in three days.
22 That's 45 sets of lawyers that can go to Pittsburgh
23 from out west, rather -
24 REPRESENTATIVE ELLIS: Or they can come
25 to Harrisburg and bring some economic development
— Key [email protected] 80
1 to the area that absolutely needs it.
2 Look, we’re going to agree to disagree
3 on this one. I was just saying that, what we’ve
4 seen from the Rendell Administration; what we’ve
5 seen from the Corbett Administration; what we’ve
6 seen from the House of Representatives and the
7 Senate over the last nine years that I have been in
8 the legislature, have been serious efforts at
9 reform. I do not believe that, when someone gives
10 you a suggestion, you shouldn’t take it seriously
11 and reconsider something; that if you explained to
12 the average person on the street, they would be
13 amazed.
14 I feel bad for the attorneys that would
15 have to drive out here to Harrisburg, but I feel
16 bad for the grassroots groups that have to come out
17 here as well. But that’s their choice, and they
18 know this is the capital of Pennsylvania, which, by
19 the way, is not in the center of the state. I wish
20 it was because, instead of having a four-hour
21 drive, I’d have a two-and-a-half-hour drive.
22 But the reality is, this is where we do
23 business. This is where the Governor is. This is
24 where the legislature is, and this is where your
25 home office is. I would take it into consideration
— Key [email protected] 81
1 that, perhaps you should think about it. And next
2 year whenever you come before me, if I’m fortunate
3 enough to be on the Appropriations Committee, I’ d
4 like to maybe revisit this topic.
5 Beyond that, I thank you for your time.
6 Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
7 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: I want to
8 thank Chief Justice Castille and Justice Eakin for
9 appearing before us today. I’m looking forward to
10 working with you.
11 As you know, economic times are tough,
12 and we’re trying to work together to put together
13 the best possible budget for the Commonwealth of
14 Pennsylvania, and I’ m looking forward to working
15 with you. Thank you very much.
16 CHIEF JUSTICE CASTILLE: We thank the
17 committee for their time.
18 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN ADOLPH: I’ d like to
19 remind the members of the Appropriations Committee
20 that, in five minutes we will reconvene with the
21 Secretary of Agriculture. Thank you.
22 (At 4:15 p.m., the budget hearing
23 concluded).
24 -k ~k ~k ~k
25
— Key Reporters [email protected] 82
1 CERTIFICATE
2
3 I, Karen J. Meister, Reporter, Notary
4 Public, duly commissioned and qualified in and for
5 the County of York, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,
6 hereby certify that the foregoing is a true and
7 accurate transcript, to the best of my ability, of
8 the budget hearing stenographically taken by me and
9 reduced to computer printout under my supervision.
10 This certification does not apply to any
11 reproduction of the same by any means unless under
12 my direct control and/or supervision.
13
14
15
16 Karen J. Meister Reporter, Notary Public 17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
— Key Reporters [email protected]